Obama’s small change: Less nickel in the nickel

Buried in President Obama’s wish-list budget is a proposal not to eliminate the penny and nickel, but to cheapen them. Is such caution a metaphor?

Under a section called “Modernizes U.S. Currency,” the Treasury said in December it “suspended production of circulating Presidential $1 coins in light of the Federal Reserve Banks’ inventories of 1.4 billion in $1 coins,” claiming credit for an idea Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., promoted. (Others insist dollar coins would save money.)

The Treasury said it now will ask Congress “to provide the Secretary flexibility to change the composition of coins to more cost-effective materials, given that the current cost of making the penny is 2.4 cents and the nickel is 11.2 cents.”

We might suppose that the real efficiency would be to eliminate pennies and nickels entirely. Yet that would be to concede the erosion of the greenback’s value over these many years, perhaps sending yet more viewers into the embrace of those gold salesmen on Fox News.